At about midday on Friday, April 17, 1885, in the middle of the bloodiest era of internecine feuding that the southeastern Appalachian Mountains have ever known, a young man named Gus Finley was hanged for first degree murder at Prestonburg, Floyd County, Kentucky.
John Sparks has written a historical fiction account of events leading up to the public hanging, the execution itself, and its aftermath. John narrates the event by being the voice of Gus Finley and the eyes and ears of an Appalachian community. Frank Harman and John Addington, cousins of sorts, and Lee Venters, Frank's brother-in-law, set out to attend the grand festival around the hanging but for Frank and his companions the event is traumatic. It haunts Frank for the rest of his life.
